Maya Puchkoff graduated from La Guardia HS for Music and Art in NYC and went on to receive a BFA in Fiber Art at Kansas City Art Institute.  She has since taken classes at the Art Student’s League, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and School of Visual Art in NYC for drawing, painting, ceramics and digital and drawn animation.  Maya also has a Master’s Degree from Fordham University in Reading and Literacy and has had 8 years of experience teaching art and literacy in NYC Public Schools.

“I first became interested in shadows as a sculptor, in contradiction to weight and mass. I soon became fascinated with the beauty, simplicity and expressiveness of shadows in and of themselves.  They have an admirable adaptability.  They are both unerringly honest in their depiction of form, and illusory in their transformation from 3 to 2 dimensions.  Because of this duality between reality and illusion, I find shadows, and their concrete counterparts in sculpture, puppets and stencils, wonderful storytellers.”

Currently, Maya is exploring ways to thread all her interests; figurative sculpture, shadow puppetry and animation.  She draws inspiration from the visual theater of Theodora Skipitares, the artwork of Kara Walker, the animated films of William Ketridge, and the film montages in Koyannisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio.

Maya will be posting videos of animation soon, please check back to view them.